Timeline for Containing the GPL inside an external service?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
14 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Nov 17, 2015 at 21:37 | comment | added | Praxeolitic | @Sirisian What I meant was passing unmodified data structures to and from functions in a GPL'd lib. The GPL FAQ gives this as a guideline for communication they consider to create a combined work. | |
| Nov 17, 2015 at 21:25 | comment | added | Sirisian | @Praxeolitic You do only get that protection using AGPL. In your example of "where a raw binary is passed over a network" that would be distribution under GPL. In most server/client services though the only thing being transmitted is input/output which is unlicensed. gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLOutput | |
| Nov 17, 2015 at 21:16 | comment | added | Praxeolitic | @Sirisian Ok, fair enough. I read that as an additional suggestion rather than them saying you get that protection if and only if you use AGPL. In an extreme case where a raw binary is passed over a network between a GPL'd lib and a proprietary program there could still be an argument that the GPL is violated. I think this is why they use the confusing phrase "legitimate to require release" -- they don't want to give approval but it's tenuous whether the GPL applies. | |
| Nov 17, 2015 at 20:59 | comment | added | Sirisian | @Praxeolitic I'm not being sarcastic? I pasted the exact quote. It says to use their "GNU Affero GPL" license if you want that protection. | |
| Nov 17, 2015 at 20:49 | comment | added | Praxeolitic |
@Sirisian The sarcasm isn't helpful. Did you read the quote? They continue However, putting the program on a server machine for the public to talk to is hardly “private” use, so it would be legitimate to require release of the source code in that special case.
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| Nov 17, 2015 at 20:27 | comment | added | AturSams | Very interesting! | |
| Nov 17, 2015 at 19:52 | comment | added | Sirisian | @Praxeolitic I was referring to the line: "Therefore, the company does not have to release the modified sources." Keep reading after your quote: " Developers who wish to address this might want to use the GNU Affero GPL for programs designed for network server use." They are telling people to use a different license if they want to further restrict usage. | |
| Nov 17, 2015 at 19:51 | comment | added | Sirisian | @zehelvion programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/110380/… yes, you can even wrap a GPL program and use it as CLI to get around GPL. It's done all the time, just be aware that code, the wrapper, is then GPL. | |
| Nov 17, 2015 at 19:34 | comment | added | AturSams | @Sirisian So a commercial closed source service can make cli use of an open sources service for the user? | |
| Nov 17, 2015 at 19:16 | comment | added | Praxeolitic | @Sirisian I don't think they say that. Are you just talking about the quote I pasted? Their language is very ambivalent here but I read as just vaguely suggesting that this is a violation. Communicating via a command line is different because here our evil GPL wrapping server has to link to the GPL lib. | |
| Nov 17, 2015 at 19:09 | comment | added | Praxeolitic | @zehelvion My interpretation is that a network itself isn't a GPL shield. The FSF considers local "GPL wrapper" schemes to be violations and if you just put a network between wrapper components it's not fundamentally different. The FSF is fine with communication via standardized interfaces, fork-exec, and interpreted languages so if the network protocol resembles one of those then everything is fine but the network itself isn't the key. If the protocol was just raw binary data structures pilfered from a GPL lib and put on a pipe then it's hard to say why that's different from linking. | |
| Nov 17, 2015 at 18:17 | comment | added | Sirisian | As they say though in the link it's perfectly legal under GPL to do that. There is no gray area. It's similar to calling GPL code through command line interface. | |
| Nov 17, 2015 at 18:15 | comment | added | AturSams | So technically you're saying it could be isolated to a server and used as a service by a paid program as long as all the code relevant to that server is published to the public under GPL. Meaning: Paid closed source software running on some Server A while free open source software is running on Server B and Server A connects to Server B and reaps the benefits from what's supposed to be open source in a closed source, commercial application. | |
| Nov 17, 2015 at 16:30 | history | answered | Praxeolitic | CC BY-SA 3.0 |